Paid members propose projects, and funds award them. There is a platform project pool, filled by half of every membership, and communities can run funds of their own. The first is The Garden's, administered by Abiding Practice, a registered 501(c)(3). How decisions get made is spelled out below.
Live counts across the whole platform. Grants awarded includes every fund; the ledger below is one fund's.
Locations appear here as members add a city to their profile.
Back a creative's project directly. They get 90%. Not tax-deductible — this is person-to-person funding.
Browse projects →Donate to The Garden's fund through Abiding Practice, a 501(c)(3). They decide their own awards, and those awards are listed below.
The platform project pool is filled by membership dues — 50% of every payment — and by one-time contributions, of which 90% goes to the pool and 10% to the platform. Communities can run funds of their own. The Garden's is administered by Abiding Practice, a 501(c)(3), through its own payment processor; gifts there are tax-deductible and never pass through this platform. The ledger on this page is The Garden's fund; the project pool's ledger is at /fund/creatives-exchange.
Any paid member can submit a proposal to a fund: a title, a summary and an amount of $5 or more, optionally tied to a project they lead. One open proposal per fund at a time.
Platform operators review proposals to the project pool and approve or decline them. A community fund's administrator decides its own awards — for The Garden, that is Abiding Practice. Approval and payout are separate steps: a grant exists only once it is recorded as a public allocation with recipient, amount and month.
There is no fixed cycle or deadline yet. Awards are made by hand from the balance the ledger shows. Published criteria, a conflict-of-interest policy and community-run selection are not yet defined — they are on the roadmap, not in place.
Any approved community can have its own pool today, with its own page and contribution button. A city program, a foundation or a nonprofit could publish its awards the same way. Percent-of-dues pledges to a community pool, award deadlines and host-run selection are planned, not built.
Gifts to The Garden's fund are: Abiding Practice is a registered 501(c)(3), and you'll receive a receipt for your records. Contributions to the platform project pool are not.
A paid member submits a proposal to a fund. Platform operators decide proposals to the project pool; a community fund's administrator decides its own — Abiding Practice, for The Garden. There is no fixed cycle yet, and a grant is only a grant once it appears on the ledger above.
Backing a project sends money directly to the creative (90/10 split, not tax-deductible). Donating to a community fund like The Garden's goes to its administrator — Abiding Practice — who decides its own awards; that's the tax-deductible path. Contributing to the project pool is a third option: not tax-deductible, 90% to the pool.